[bsder]

Welcome to the endgame of Always Late(tm) Inventory.

Since everybody has beaten any excess capacity out of their systems, nobody is in danger from competitors, and everybody can raise prices.

What are you going to do? Switch to somebody else? They only have 10% excess capacity, at best, and will take years to spin up anything extra because nobody higher in the supply chain has any excess either. And, if you threaten us and piss us off, you'll be completely screwed as we'll drop you completely since there are other customers who would be happy could take our capacity. Your competitor may not be able to knife you, but your suppliers sure can.

And nobody is going to build capacity because that takes money immediately for an uncertain return in the future. See: industrial toilet paper and Covid shortages

Buckle up. The ride is gonna be bumpy.